Spain finds cemetery of 400 Muslims of Andalusia backed to 1,300 years ago

A cemetery emerged during excavations of an underground tunnel in the town of Tauste, which has a population of 7,000, in the province of Zaragoza, northeastern Spain.

An Islamic cemetery, which they described as exceptional and amazing, and as one of the oldest cemeteries in Spain was discovered. Two days ago, they announced its discovery and the presence of at least 400 graves in it, all of them for Muslims who lived in Andalusia between the eighth and eleventh centuries AD.

Its presence indicated that the Muslim population in the north of Spain, where the region Aragon, nowadays, was larger than historians thought, and the conversion to Islam among its local population was also rapid.

The cemetery appeared during the excavations of an underground tunnel in a town called Tauste, which has a population of 7,000, in the province of Zaragoza in the northeast of Spain, where “Tragutha” was the farthest part of Andalusia in the north from the south during the time of Islamic rule, for nearly two-thirds of Spain.

Between 4,000 to 5,000 graves are buried

As for launching these descriptions on the cemetery, it is because they found in its graves “the remains of the bodies in good preservation and the possibility of discovering 100 other graves in them until the end of the excavation,” according to what local media reported,

 Al-Arabiya.net visited its sites, according to a spokesman for The Company Paleoymás, who undertakes the excavation and subsequent study of the sediments, aims to discover more about the area. In the video presented below, we see that they have found their graves below a residential area in the town.

The company had previously found small human remains at the beginning, which it thought belonged to the mass graves of those who died more than 100 years ago in the cholera epidemic that spread in Spain in the nineteenth century, according to the El Español newspaper, with the news that what appeared later, “are the bodies of the one lying down. One is on the right side, and the head is directed toward the southeast to Mecca “in reference to Francisco Javier Gutiérrez, the supervisor of the excavation, that the graves are for Muslims.

The excavators were documenting more of their graves, until they classified 44 of the Islamic Andalusian era at the beginning, and then In recent days a “toast cemetery” appeared to them, which is expected to contain between 4,000 and 5,000 buried graves.

From what they found, along with the remains of some of the deceased in their final resting place in the cemetery, small items, such as earrings. Experts were also able to decode more details about the Muslims who inhabited the district of “Taraghouta” and the town of Tauste in particular, as the DNA of the bodies was analyzed, making sure that most of them were of people of African origin.

The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally marked with the Battle of Covadonga (718 or 722), the first known victory in Hispania by Christian military forces since the 711 military invasion undertaken by combined Arab-Berber forces.

In that battle, a group led by Hispano-Roman nobleman Pelagius and consisting of Hispano-Visigoth refugees, the remnants of their Hispano-Gothic aristocracy, and mountain tribes, including mainly Astures, Galicians, Cantabri, and Basques, defeated a Muslim army in the mountains of northern Hispania and established the independent Christian Kingdom of Asturias.

In the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanza waged military campaigns for 30 years to subjugate the northern Christian kingdoms. His armies ravaged the north, even sacking the great Santiago de Compost Ela Cathedral.

There are 22 cemeteries in Spain with areas set aside for Muslims. Eight are in Andalusia, the only region that allows burials without a coffin. Until now this was permitted in Griñón, where Muslims from northern, western, and central Spain, where there are no Islamic cemeteries, were buried. In the rest of Spain, Muslims are buried in coffins, which are usually adapted by drilling holes in them so the body can be said to be in contact with the earth, in keeping with Islamic burial rites.